17-year-old lieutenant waited for a Union mine to explode: Part 1

James J. Chase was 17 and a newly minted second lieutenant when he posed for this portrait, probably at a studio in Maine. He rejoined the 32nd Maine Infantry Regiment at Petersburg in July 1864, just in time to participate in the Battle of the Crater. (Maine State Archives)

The massive explosion that shook James J. Chase awake at Petersburg followed him home to Maine.

Hailing from Turner, the 16-year-old Chase joined the war effort in August 1863. Showing talent and leadership capabilities, he received a commission and a transfer to the 32nd Maine Infantry in late winter 1864 as a second lieutenant assigned to Co. D.

Chase missed the regiment’s decimating combat at Spotsylvania Courthouse that May. In late July he arrived in the Petersburg trenches and reported to the 32nd’s commander, Col. Mark Wentworth. Chase was on leave until Aug. 2; Wentworth told him to find someplace to relax until then, but the young officer decided to rejoin his men on the front line.

Guided by a soldier named Peare, Chase navigated the trenches, ran across an open ravine as Confederate bullets whizzed past, and “at about three P.M. we reached the regiment.”

The stunned Chase could not believe the “surprise [that] met my eyes as I gazed upon what was once the Thirty-second Maine Regiment. Instead of a full regiment of one thousand men, dressed in new uniforms, as I had last seen them, scarcely three months before, I beheld but 270 men.

“Their cloths were tattered and torn,” he saw. “Some had no coats and some no blankets; some wore one boot and one shoe, while others had none.”

Chase felt conspicuous in his clean uniform and shoulder straps because “officers, by their dress, could hardly be distinguished from the men, save by the sword they carried in place of a musket.”

He found Capt. H.R. Sargent, who commanded the companies deployed in these trenches perhaps 60 yards from similar Confederate positions. Sargent ordered Chase “to assume command” of Co. D, “then under command of Lieut. Dorman.”

Chase “found thirteen privates and three non-commissioned officers, of the full company of one hundred I left scarcely three months before.”

His arrival was not fortuitous.

“Seated beside a hard-bread box, a blanket over his shoulders,” Dorman was pinching lice in “an old shirt spread out on the box,” Chase noticed. The lieutenants exchanged formal orders; a cannon shell suddenly exploded “but a few feet above our heads.”

Left uninjured “but stunned by the concussion,” Chase checked his men: Dorman “was severely wounded in face and arm,” a corporal lay dying, and “two privates were groaning and tossing about in agony, from wounds they had received.”

Chase “now had but two sergeants and ten privates” in Co. D.

Sharpshooters from the Army of the Potomac’s 18th Corps seek Confederate targets amidst the trenches rimming Petersburg, Va. The soldier on the firing step at right has slid his cocked rifle through a small firing port; a Confederate sniper could target this soldier and actually shoot him through the firing port. When he caught up with the 32nd Maine Infantry Regiment at Petersburg in July 1864, Lt. James J. Chase found his men engaged in similar activity. (Library of Congress)

Another regiment relieved the 32nd Maine in the evening on Tuesday, July 26; the Maine boys returned “to our retreat in the pine woods” behind the Union lines, according to Chase. Off to the right he saw Union “sappers and miners carrying powder to the mine (tunnel)” dug from the Federal lines to a point beneath the Confederate fort atop Cemetery Hill.

Excavated by coal miners from the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, the tunnel ran 511 feet to a gallery excavated about 50 feet beneath the Confederate fort. The miners packed the gallery with four tons of gunpowder.

Alfred Waud sketched 48th Pennsylvania Infantry soldiers carrying bags of gunpowder along the covered way leading to the tunnel dug beneath Confederate lines at Petersburg, Va. After the 32nd Maine Infantry Regiment was relieved from its position in the Petersburg trenches, Lt. James J. Chase saw soldiers carrying gunpowder toward the entrance to the mine. (Library of Congress)

Plans called for the mine to blow up at 3:30 a.m., Saturday, July 30, to create a gaping hole in Southern lines. Charging Union brigades would plunge through the gap, with some units moving straight ahead to capture the Confederates’ secondary line and other units spreading right and left to seize additional entrenchments along the primary line.

“Near midnight [on Friday] I lay down to sleep,” but Chase restlessly tossed and turned before finally nodding off. At 2:30 a.m., Saturday, he “was aroused by the Orderly Sergeant telling me the hour had come.”

The 32nd Maine Infantry would charge after the mine exploded.

“Grasping my sword at my side, I hurriedly took my place in the line now being formed,” Chase joined his men. “The necessary orders were given in a low tone, and silently we marched out of the woods and along the covered way,” a trench dug sufficiently deep that Confederate snipers could not see men traveling through it.

The Maine boys waited. “By the light of the full moon we could distinctly see the outlines of the enemy’s fort on Cemetery Hill, not 300 yards distant,” according to Chase. At 3:15 a.m. “our troops were in position.”

The 32nd Maine belonged to the 1st Brigade commanded by Brig. Gen. William Francis Bartlett. The brigade was “designated to lead the charge,” Chase noted.

At Petersburg National Battlefield Park in Petersburg, the National Park Service has recreated the entrance to the tunnel dug to place a gunpower-packed mine beneath a Confederate fort some 500 feet away. The mine was exploded at 4:44 a.m. on Saturday, July 30, 1864. (Brian Swartz Photo)

At 3:30 a.m. “there was a deathly silence among the men,” and “every eye was turned toward the doomed fort, but contrary to our expectations no explosion took place,” Chase expressed his surprise.

The fuse lit to detonate the gunpowder-packed gallery beneath Cemetery Hill had gone out; two 48th Pennsylvania volunteers, Lt. Jacob Douty and Sgt. Harry Reese, scurried into the tunnel, spliced and lit a new fuse, and scrambled to safety.

Chase and his comrades wondered about the delay. With the early midsummer sunrise not far off, “we were ordered to lie down, as a precaution from being seen by the enemy,” Chase noted.

Next: 32nd Maine Infantry charges into The Crater.

Brian Swartz can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net.

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About Brian Swartz

Welcome to "Maine at War," the blog about the roles played by Maine and her sons and daughters in the Civil War. I am a Civil War buff and a newspaper editor recently retired from the Bangor Daily News.
Maine sent hero upon hero — soldiers, nurses, sailors, chaplains, physicians — south to preserve their country in the 1860s. “Maine at War” introduces these heroes and heroines, who, for the most part, upheld the state's honor during that terrible conflict. We tour the battlefields where they fought, and we learn about the Civil War by focusing on Maine’s involvement with it.
Be prepared: As I discover to this very day, the facts taught in American classrooms don’t always jibe with Civil War reality.
I can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net.

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Brian Swartz

Welcome to "Maine at War," the blog about the roles played by Maine and her sons and daughters in the Civil War. I am a Civil War buff and a newspaper editor recently retired from the Bangor Daily News.
Maine sent hero upon hero — soldiers, nurses, sailors, chaplains, physicians — south to preserve their country in the 1860s. “Maine at War” introduces these heroes and heroines, who, for the most part, upheld the state's honor during that terrible conflict. We tour the battlefields where they fought, and we learn about the Civil War by focusing on Maine’s involvement with it.
Be prepared: As I discover to this very day, the facts taught in American classrooms don’t always jibe with Civil War reality.
I can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net.